Friday, February 6, 2009

Prof. WARREN: Well, they're trying to push money into banks and the question the oversight panel was asking is, `are you getting an equivalent amount back?' And so that's what this was about. Now there could be lots of policy reasons that Treasury might decide that it wanted this money to be in the banks. But our question is the one we put to Secretary Paulson, and that is, `are you putting it in and getting back assets that are worth equivalent value?' He told us yes; our independent investigation said no

CHEN: So are you saying he was lying?

Prof. WARREN: Well, I'm telling you he told us yes and our independent investigation said no.

Dear sweet baby Jesus, who could have foreseen? Hank Paulson was overpaying for worthless assets and then lying to the TARP Congressional Oversight Panel. Are we sure he even bought bank assets? Are we sure Oahu isn't wholly owned by the Hankster now?

But even beyond him paying more for bad assets, why was this even the plan in the first place? "Well banks have lots of worthless assets, so we better buy them at inflated prices that they aren't worth, so then everything is magically fixed and the magic TARP unicorn makes the assets gain some sort of value again." Paulson made a bad plan worse, congrats, I've just summed up the entire Bush regime. So, just in case you were wondering, a lot of that money did get wasted by the Bush Administration. Try and act surprised. At least we own some bank assets that aren't worth what we paid for them. We'll burn them for warmth.